Introduction

Abstract

The fundamental structures of Byzantium in the eleventh century have not been subjected to close and sustained scrutiny since the 1970s: it was during the eleventh century that Byzantium reached its apogee, in terms of power, prestige, and territorial extension, only to then plunge into steep political decline in the second half of the century. It is therefore well worth taking a thorough look at the social order in this age of change, to see how it was affected by economic growth and political expansion, and what were the consequences of the social changes which occurred. The Introduction sets out the origins of the volume in a workshop on the social order in eleventh-century Byzantium held in Oxford in May 2011, the third in a series of workshops funded by the British Academy on The Transformation of Byzantium: Law, Literature and Society in the Eleventh Century. It provides brief abstracts of the individual chapters, summarizing the approaches of their authors, in addition to a longer outline of the paper given by Mark Whittow on the Feudal Revolution at the workshop in 2011.